Understanding sex/gender differences in intelligence profiles of children with Autism: A comprehensive WISC meta-analysis.

Giofrè et al. (2024) pooled every WISC study they could find on kids with autism. They wanted to see if boys and girls score differently on full-scale IQ or any WISC sub-test.

The meta-analysis covered school-age children. No new kids were tested; the team re-analyzed published data sets.

Overall IQ came out the same for both sexes. The only blip was a tiny male edge on perceptual reasoning, and even that gap matched the one seen in typical kids.

In plain words: an autistic girl and an autistic boy are just as likely to have the same IQ score.

English et al. (2020) saw the same "no difference" result in toddlers tested with the MSEL. Together, the two studies stretch the null finding from age two to age fourteen and across two different IQ tests.

Reichow (2012) and Rodgers et al. (2021) both report that early ABA programs lift IQ by a medium amount. David et al. add the nuance that those gains are not driven by one sex learning faster than the other.

Magiati et al. (2001) warned that picking the wrong test can swing a preschooler's IQ by 20 points. David et al. echo the caution: any sex pattern you think you see might be the test talking, not the child.

You can skip sex-specific norms when you interpret WISC results for kids with ASD. Focus your energy on choosing the right test battery and on planning interventions, not on adjusting for gender. If a girl's score looks lower, look at testability, language level, or sensory needs first—just as you would for a boy.

Intelligence testing in autism often raises the question of whether girls score lower than boys. To move past single, small studies, this work pooled results across nine studies using the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC), totaling 1,105 children (809 boys and 296 girls).

A meta-analysis combines effect sizes across studies, using random-effects models to account for the real variation between them, which gives a more stable estimate than any one sample.

There were no significant sex differences in general intellectual functioning (full-scale IQ), verbal comprehension, working memory, or processing speed among children with autism. Boys showed an advantage only on the perceptual reasoning index.

At the individual subtest level the picture was mixed: boys outperformed on some tasks and girls on others. The broad conclusion is that overall intelligence profiles of autistic boys and girls are far more similar than different.